The Effects of Radar Separation on Air Traffic Control - Research Paper Example

The Effects of Radar Separation on Air Traffic Control In this paper, I discuss various effects of radar separation on air traffic control. Radar separation can be taken to mean the aircrafts separation derived by the use of the radar system (ICAO, 1996). According to Nolan (2010), radar is one of the tools used by air traffic controllers to separate aircrafts operating in their assigned airspace. This separation can be measured in different aspects some of them being longitudinal distance, lateral distance and vertical distance. In discussing the effects of radar separation in air traffic control, I have categorized the effects into two categories. One of the categories is the positive effects while the other category is of the negative effects. My purpose for doing this is to be able to evaluate the overall effect of radar separation in air traffic control. Radar separation has various effects on air traffic control. One of its effects is that it has helped on establishing safety of aircrafts both in the airport and in the other parts of the air space during air traffic control. This separation is one of the separation that defines how close aircraft should be when either landing on an airport or when taking-off from the airport. It also defines how far the planes should be from each other when they are travelling in airspace. This assists the air traffic controllers in ensuring that the planes are not too close to one another since it might result to increase in chances of occurrence of an accident. The radar separation has made the work of controlling aircrafts and clearing them to routes much easier. According to FAA (2010), radar separation enhances the clearing of an aircraft to an outer fixed most appropriate route. This has made controlling of aircrafts during air traffic control much easier whether during landing, take-off or during flights in the airspace. The air traffic controllers in their work have been using this radar separation to assign aircraft to appropriate routes more effectively. As a result, we can say that this separation has eased the work of this kind of responsibility of air traffic controllers. Through this radar separation, it has become possible for air traffic controllers to estimate the distance between two planes travelling in the same airspace. As Spence (2007) puts it, radar separation can play a great part in enabling controllers to estimate distance between planes in the same airspace. This has enhance the ability of air traffic controllers to give accurate and more appropriate information to pilots flying in their assigned airspace and also in giving more accurate information to other controllers controlling the other airspace that the aircraft is moving towards. Through this separation air, traffic control has become more efficient in terms of information delivery to pilots and coordination between the air traffic controllers. With radar separation, it has become possible for air traffic controllers to guide planes landing behind other planes over the landing threshold. This helps in reducing the effects that might be felt by the planes landing behind other planes. Through radar separation the air traffic controller can define how far the plane should be from another plane landing over a landing threshold (FAA, 1987). Landing very closely to another plane that lands with a large landing threshold might result to severe damages of the aircraft. Therefore, radar separation helps air traffic controllers to help pilots avoid damages of their aircrafts during landing. The wake turbulence resulting mainly from large jets can make it difficult for pilots of other aircrafts flying behind or beside them to control their aircrafts. According to FAA (1987), radar separation helps in avoiding possible wake turbulence felt especially by smaller aircrafts travelling behind large jets. It is believed that the wake turbulence can make other the other aircrafts much more difficult to control both by the pilot flying them and the air traffic controllers controlling them. This effect of radar separation has brought a significant positive impact to the air transport, making it both safe and efficient. The radar separation has increased efficiency of air traffic controllers in controlling air traffic in their assigned air space. Radar separation can help in identifying when a plane has exceeded both lateral and longitudinal separation minima (Croucher, 2001). This helps the air traffic controllers to realize when the aircrafts are very close to each other either laterally or longitudinally. This gives the air traffic controllers the ability to guide the movements of an aircraft in their air space more efficiently. It also helps them in ensuring that the aircraft transits to the other airspaces controlled by other air traffic controllers with a good separation. This it is clear that this radar separation assist in increasing both efficiency and coordination of air traffic controllers in their duties. Another effect of radar separation in air traffic control is that it has assisted in reducing the workload of air traffic controllers. If this radar separation is not available, the air traffic controllers could be forced to rely mainly on the non-radar separation. According to Croucher (2001), these non-radar separations are more difficult to establish as compared to radar separation. Therefore using them would make the work of air traffic controllers to be rather more difficult. This becomes even worse when these non-radar separations are the only form of separation available for use by the air traffic controllers. However, when the radar separation is adapted mainly for those planes that are identified the workload of the air traffic controllers have been greatly reduced. Another effect of radar separation is that it has made it possible to use other non-radar separation in their most appropriate times. It is a requirement for an air traffic controller to maintain radar separation from all observed targets until non-radar separation is established from the non-identified aircraft (Crouch, 2001). In doing this the air traffic controllers are able to apply the non-radar separation when it is most appropriate. In this way the radar separation has been providing a better alternative to the non-radar separation in some situation thus influencing the air traffic control process. Radar separation has enhanced better use of the airspace to accommodate as many flights as possible while ensuring that the probability of occurrence of accidents is not increased. This has been achieved with both lateral and longitudinal radar separation. Through this, it has become possible to realize when planes are too far apart from one another. The air traffic controllers have been using this information to control the movement of aircrafts in their airplanes in such a way that minimizes this distance while observing not to exceed their minima. This has enabled the airspace to be accommodating more aircrafts compared to the number to could have been accommodating if it could not have been possible to minimize these distances. Thus, radar separation has affected air traffic control process through enhancing effective use of the available airspace. The radar separations are always not consistent since they depend on several factors some of which the air traffic controllers cannot control. Some of the factors they depend on are the weather condition of the airspace and the distance between the plane and the radar system. They also depend with whether the plane is approaching the radar of moving away from the radar system. As a result is very difficult to realize when an error has occurred to due poor performance of an air traffic controller. According to Kirwan & Rodgers (2005), these can actually complicate the process of measuring the performance of air traffic controllers in their duties. This has very greatly affected the process of air traffic control since it makes it difficult to detect incompetent air traffic controllers who need to be replaced. Moreover, radar separation relies on the use of the radar system that has not been that effective in the control of air traffic. The ineffectiveness of this system can be shown by increase in congestion in airports as the demand for air transportation increases. It is therefore clear that this radar separation plays a key role in causing congestion in the airports. This is because sometimes flights are forced to be delayed or to be shifted to other runways in order to maintain a recommendable longitudinal and lateral radar separation of aircrafts thus resulting to congestions in those airports. This has greatly affected the control of air traffic in those airports and has negatively affected air transportation at large. The radar separation is limited in terms of the distance between the aircraft and the radar in which the measurement they give can be taken to be accurate. Their use thus has been limited to areas near the radar systems. As a result it has made the control of aircrafts in other areas especially those far from the radar system to rather impossible. This has limited the airspace used by the Federal Aviation Administration thus making it to be trying to look for an alternative. The NextGen project that FAA has proposed to implement is expected to bring out other more efficient measures of separation of aircrafts separation to replace the radar system. This would result to some other form of separation that could estimate the distance between plane much more better. Radar separation does not give vertical separation between aircrafts flying in the same airspace that affects the accuracy in the distance between aircrafts in which they estimate. According to Garland et al. (1999), radar separation only gives lateral and longitudinal separation of aircrafts but fails to give their vertical separation. Since the vertical separation is also important in the controlling of an aircraft by both the pilot and the air traffic controllers, lack of its measurements can result to negative effects to the process of air traffic control. Therefore, because of the inability of the radar separation to give the vertical distance between aircraft it can be believed to have negatively affected the air traffic control process. There are several situational contexts that air traffic control takes place and each of the contexts is influence by its own flight factors. Some of the contexts of air traffic control are the flight control at the airport, the flight control at the airspace and the flight control during transition from one airspace section to another. The radar separation cannot be used in all the flight contexts during due to its various limitations like the distance between the plane and the radar (Daividssonet al. 2005). One of the situational contexts where that radar cannot be used is the flight control when an aircraft is transiting from one airspace section to another. Hence, I believe that through this limitation radar separation has negatively affected the control of air traffic by not enabling control of air traffic in all situational contexts. With the radar separation minima, it has become rather difficult to control the overwhelming increase in air traffic. This is because these minima requires the aircrafts to be a certain distance longitudinally and laterally in an airspace irrespective of the number of flights scheduled on that airspace. Since air traffic has been increasing due to increasing demand for air transport, the flights scheduled by airline companies have been increasing on annual bases requiring the air traffic controller to try and accommodate as much flights as possible. This has been greatly hindered by the radar separation minima thus making it difficult to control the traffic. The radar separation, which is the separation derived by the radar system, has had various effects to the process of air traffic control. Some of its effects are positive as helping air traffic controllers reduces the probability of occurrence of aviation accidents and assisting the controllers in helping pilots to avoid possible turbulence. However, it has brought some negative effects too to the process of air traffic control. Some of this negative effect is that it has resulted to congestion in airports; it has made it difficult to control aircraft when transiting between airspace sections and has made it difficult to measure performance of air traffic controllers. Although we have a good number of positive effects the negative effects outweighs the positive ones and thus radar separation should be supplemented with other not radar separation in its use. Moreover, I believe that the initiative of the Federal Aviation Administration to improve the technology used in air traffic control will result to other more precise form of separation that would make the air traffic control process to be more efficient. 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Spence, C. F. (2006). Aim/far 2007. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional. Read More